Brad Vincent Could Do It All

He started at point guard his freshman year in high school, then went on to play junior college basketball.

He played one junior varsity football game as a freshman, then went on to start at running back the rest of his high school career, including as a junior when he led The Daily Record area in scoring.

He won three letters in track as a sprinter, with a 10.9 100-yard dash clocking (on cinders, no less) to his credit.

What everyone will tell you, though, is that Brad Vincent's best sport was baseball.

"Of any player I ever had, Brad was the guy I thought could play professional baseball," said former Waynedale baseball coach Tom Capek. "He had a terrific arm, great range, good size (5-foot-11, 175 pounds), soft hands and he could hit the ball, too.

"He was an outstanding shortstop."

In high school, there was little that Brad Vincent couldn't do, and that's why the 1969 Golden Bear grad has been voted the No. 41 player on The Daily Record's 50 Greatest Athletes of the Century.

"He was great at everything," said current Waynedale athletic director Les Saurer, and for three years a teammate of Vincent's in high school. "He wasn't just a 4-sport letterman as a freshman, but an impact player as a freshman."

It was baseball, though, where Vincent seemed to stand out the most, one of the reasons the Bears went a combined 39-8 in his junior and senior seasons.

BRAD VINCENT CROSSES home plate with Waynedale's first run in this 1969 photo of the Bears' regional final game vs. Bridgeport. File photo

"I just felt I excelled more offensively and defensively in baseball, but I enjoyed football more," said Vincent, when asked his best sport.

Along with his Holmesville childhood buddies, he formed a bond that would last over 15 years on area diamonds. The group would go on to win a state and national Hot Stove title, twice take Waynedale to the regionals, and later made up one of the area's most dominant slowpitch softball teams, the Miller Pipers.

"We used to play ball all day back then," said Vincent. "When we got tired of that, we made up games.

"We'd go up to the park in Holmesville and play. I can still remember -- Randy Kiser would play first, Bobby Hartsell second, I was at short and (my cousin) Jeff Vincent at third. That was our infield from 11-years-old through the Miller Pipers."

Coming off a regional semifinal appearance his junior year, in which the Bears lost 4-1 to Bridgeport, Vincent already had 12 letters on his sweater. With a chance at four more varsity W's, Vincent was looking for the rare high school accomplishment of 16 varsity letters as he was poised for a big senior season. As a junior, he scored 88 points in football, best in the area that fall, and excelled on the basketball court, including a late-season 30-point explosion.

His swan song of a senior season, though, was slowed by a knee injury suffered during football practice.

"Thirty years ago there wasn't any arthroscopic surgery," said Vincent. "They had to transplant some tendons and I didn't return until halfway through the basketball season.

"I went on to Monroe Community College and was captain of the basketball team, but they didn't have a football or baseball team.

"From there, I went to Baldwin-Wallace and earned my degree, but didn't play any sports. It was more my knee than anything else," he continued. "I couldn't do what I wanted. It was good enough for summer softball, but not college ball."

Statistics and athletic ability aside -- "I was graced by God and my family with the skill to play ball," Vincent said -- he had another characteristic that made him stand out.